Radio Script #13
Little Talk On Common Things
February 6, 1949
From the earliest days of our government, every session of the Senate and of the House of Representatives has been opened with prayer. Too often, during the hundred and sixty years of our nation’s history, those prayers have been perfunctory and trite. No one paid any attention to them.
Then, a few years ago, the Reverend Peter Marshall became chaplain of the Senate. Last week he died at the early age of 48, but in the few short years during Which he had opened .the Senate’s daily sessions with prayer, he had made his name known allover the land. For his prayers were most unusual. They were copied in daily newspapers, not only in the united States, but in Canada, in Britain, in India, South Africa and Australia.
Peter Marshall’s prayers made even the politicians listen. Sen. Vandenberg once said he could never be sure whether Marshall was praying for him or at him. There was nothing trite or perfunctory about those prayers. Only a few weeks before his death, at a session of the present 81st Congress he had said: “Dear Lord, save us from useless worry lest ulcers of the stomach be the badge of our lack of faith”. When the momentous question of European Relief first came before the Senate, Peter Marshall prayed: “Give us the wisdom to know where to stand and the courage to stand there, lest failing to stand we fall for anything.”
One of his earliest prayers woke up dozing senators with these words: “Help us to see the middle path between much talk that ends in no action, and hasty action without free discussion”. Again he said: “When we have nothing to say, give us the wisdom to say nothing”. One day, when the previous session had been stormy with insinuations and bitterness, this chaplain prayed: “Keep our minds attuned to the eternal values of faith and hope and human kindness, and let us not be submerged in the littleness of prejudice and hate”.
In the 80th Congress, when the closing time drew near and there was so much hectic confusion, when several sessions lasted all day and all night, when bodies had been fatigued and nerves frayed, Peter Marshall one morning prayed before the senate in these words: “0 Lord, give us the wisdom to realize that there are only 24 hours in a day, that trying to crowd 30 hours activity into 24 hours makes us creatures of circumstance, not creatures of God. If Perhaps the most quoted of Peter Marshall’s senatorial prayers is one uttered in those days when Congress changed its political control in 1946, and men of both parties challenged each other’s motives. This is what the senate chaplain then said: “Much as we need to live in harmony with others, much as we yearn for our neighbor’s approval, help us, 0 Lord, to the greater task of living in harmony with ourselves, so that at night we can look in the mirror and say ‘I may have been wrong today. I may have displeased my neighbor; but I can go to bed with my conscience clear.’
Peter Marshall will be greatly missed in the senate of the united States. In its century and a half of existence the greatest deliberative body in the world has had no other chaplain who could reveal to men in high places, so simply, so directly, so challengingly, the inner secrets of their own souls.
Next week we shall have more to say about the narrow guage railroads. We are grateful to those of our listeners who have called or written us during the week, and we shall acknowledge some of those conununications next Sunday. Weshall tell you also, at that time, who the person is that insists there were once ten of those old two-foot roads in Maine. And he counts the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes as only one road, though it was originally three. Last week I named five of those old railroads. So far I have heard of only one more — a narrow guage road that ran from Old Orchard to Ocean Park and Ferry Beach. There must have been others. I want to know about them before next Sunday.
Among the old-time things we like to remember are the church suppers in our small Maine villages at the turn of the century. Churches still hold public suppers today. They are frequent and they are good, right here in Waterville in 1949. But they aren’t like the old timers. Circle suppers, they called them in my boyhood town, for they were put on in each church by the Ladies Aid Society, locally called the Ladies Circle.
In my town the Universalist suppers were considered best and drew the biggest crowds, but that reputation may not have been due wholly to the food. For only the Universalists allowed after-supper dancing in their vestry. The Congregationalists permitted a few sedate square dances, but the Methodists banned dancing in any form.
The principal dish at those suppers was baked beans, supported by brown bread and rolls, pickles in lavish variety, and topped off with big pieces of pie and cake, all washed down with gallons of steaming coffee. And the price I never knew it to change from 1900 to 1910 was ten cents. In 1912 I was a student in college when my mother wrote me what a howl had gone up in town because her circle .had raised their supper price to 15 cents.
Once a year there was a special supper for which folks paid 20 cents without protest. It was known as the Men’s Supper, put on, like all the rest, for the public of both sexes, but with the work done by the men. It always came in February and it was always oyster stew. ‘ And the dessert was just as uniform — not a variety of cakes and pies as at the ladies’ suppers — but only what we called “Cream pie”, now better known as Washington Pie. We boys used to wangle for a piece of one of those marvelous three-deckers, whipped cream between the layers and a mountain of Whipped cream on top.
Doubtless some of those wonderful suppers are still served in country towns today, but their price is no longer 10 or 20 cents.
A few weeks ago we were talking about rumor, and we gave special attention to the blasting, killing effect of evil rumor. We mentioned how rumors have harmed the sale of certain products, have even driven some firms out of business. Did you know that deliberate propaganda for good rumor also happens in the business world? The best men of business still believe that the way to long term success is to make a better mouse trap than your neighbor, to produce a product which in quality and price will find a favorable market in open competition.
Yet so powerful is modern advertising that everyone knows it can do a lot to make the public want to buy a particular product. What isn’t so well known is that there are people who make a business of spreading favorable rumors from mouth to ear. In his recent book “The Affairs of Dame Rumor”, David Jacobson, a well known public relations consultant in New York, tells us about professional rumor services, organizations equipped to plant Whatever rumors a client felt would improve his chances to get the consumer I s dollar. Mr. Jacobson names the oldest of these rumor services, established in 1915, as W. Howard Downey and Associates, with offices in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Toronto. “On a few hours notice”, says Mr. Jacobson, “this firm told prospective clients it was prepared to supply operatives for spreading rumors anywhere in the country. The standard contract provided two-man teams to circulate word-of-mouth propaganda by conversation in subways, theaters, commuter trains, elevators, and all other places of public assembly”.
Here is a sample of the professional rumor-making technique. On behalf of a tire manufacturer one of. these two-men teams worked a commuter’s train. When they boarded the train, one of them seemed to be a businessman and the other a unifo:rmed chauffeur carrying a brand-new tire. “These XYZ tires”, exclaimed the chauffeur, “are the best I·ve ever put on the boss’ car.” “You don’t say. John”, replied the businessman. “And how many thousand miles do you get out of them?” This was the signal for the chauffeur to launch into his spiel. The mileage he claimed for these tires was phenomenal. The commuters were impressed, the talk lingered in their minds, and probably some of them bought ~Z tires.
One of these professional rumor agencies was once hired to pump new life into a dying broadcasting chain. The two-man teams went to work. When a team was sure it had plenty of listeners, one man would say, “Did you hear what this news broadcasting outfit is doing?” “You mean so-and-so?”, the other man would ask.
“Yes, so-and-so. They’re throwing money away like water. They’re out to get people for their programs and they’re paying money you wouldn’t believe.” That campaign was a huge success after three weeks. There is also the case of the Detroit department store that engaged a rumor agency to boost its sales of women’s dresses. Two-women teams rode the elevators in office buildings and rode the street cars during rush hours, while one woman shouted to the other about the wonderful bargains in that particular store. The teams worked for just one day. On the following day the store sold three thousand dresses.
Well, what do you think? Was Barnum right? Is there indeed one born every minute? Strangely enough, education seems to have little to do with it. Some very learned persons have been easily fooled by the affairs of Dame Runor.
In our talks about common things it would be shameful to neglect the heroes among Common folk who go unheralded and unsung. Many of the older people of Waterville knew and loved one of those unsung heroes. He was Clarence Richard Johnson, instructor in French at Colby College, just after the first World War. He was even then a charming person, a maker and holder of friends, always helping the other fellow. He had just returned from war service with the YMCA, first in the troubled Balkans, then on the western Front. During most of his stay in Waterville, Clarence Johnson lived in the home of the late William Knauff. He soon decided to leave the teaching of languages and enter the field of sociology, for he had already conducted an important social survey of Constantinople.
So he left Colby, became a sociologist, married, and was on his way to a brilliant academic career when he was stricken with tuberculosis. All the rest of his life — more than twenty years — he spent in the rest centers at Saranac Lake, in Arizona, in Colorado. More than half the time he could not rise from his bed. Did he spend his days — those coughing, suffering days — in complaining self-pity? Not Clarence Johnson. He spent every day planning and working for others. He collected little gems of cheerful thought, published them in tiny booklets, and with the sale helped deserving boys and girls to attend college. He kept up a prodigious correspondence. In his letters he was always asking about some former acquaintance who he had heard was ill. How was that friend getting along? He never mentioned his own fatal disease. When he died only a few years ago, few of his friends realized that he hadn’t been out of bed for four years. A great heroic soul was this Clarence Richard Johnson.
The truth is that there are men and women like this constantly near us, and we see them not. I heard of one such only a few days ago, a man who would feel very much embarrassed and discomforted if I should mention his name. He does not live in Waterville, but his home is not far away. For many years that man has sutfered ill health, loss of money, loss of loved ones — in fact, the veritable afflictions of Job. Yet he is the most patient, the most tolerant, the most sympathetic of men. He spends all of his time helping others. How foolish, you say, not to think more about himself! Maybe so, but perhaps he is forgetting himself into immortality.
Year: 1949